A Naperville trucking company involved in a January wreck that killed a Tollway worker and injured a state trooper can return to the highways, a judge ruled Wednesday.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration earlier this month declared the company, DND International, an “imminent hazard to public safety” after conducting an investigation of the company’s safety practices and compliance record.

DND challenged the agency’s findings in a four-day hearing before Administrative Law Judge Richard C. Goodwin. He declared that there was no evidence that the company’s actions had contributed to the fatal crash, and that the government had failed to establish that DND was an imminent hazard.

The FMCSA’s out-of-service order “amounted to the ‘death penalty’ for DND,” Goodwin said, because it forced the company off the roads. His 65-page ruling characterized the order as an overreaction that denied DND the chance to address regulators’ concerns.

Wednesday’s ruling means that DND can resume operations immediately, but the company’s attorney said it was unlikely DND trucks would be on the highways Thursday morning.

“We basically lost all our drivers,” said lawyer David LaPorte. “We have to see who’s interested in coming back to us, and see how that’s going to go. We have to see what customers of ours are going to come back to us. There is a lot of work to be done before DND trucks hit the road again.”

During the hearing, LaPorte challenged the government’s findings and said DND had “a safety record to be proud of.”

Federal officials began an investigation of DND after a Jan. 27 accident in which a driver for the company, Renato Velasquez, plowed into parked cars on Interstate 88 in a wreck that killed Tollway worker Vincent Petrella and injured Trooper Douglas Balder. DuPage County prosecutors say Velasquez — who was near the end of a marathon run from the Chicago area to Omaha, Neb., and back — had spent too many hours on the road and falsified his logbooks.

LaPorte argued that DND had no way of knowing Velasquez had exceeded federal limits on shift lengths.

Goodwin said in his ruling that there was no evidence the company’s safety practices caused “any fatigue, recklessness, dangerous driving [or] negligent driving,” that contributed to the crash.

At the time of the hearing, at least two investigations into the crash were pending, one by the Illinois State Police and the other by the National Transportation Safety Board.

FMCSA spokeswoman Marissa Padilla said the agency will appeal the decision.

“Investigators uncovered a dangerous pattern of behavior that the company and their drivers made every effort to conceal,” Padilla said in a statement. “Keeping this company off the road is in the best interest of public safety.”

Since the crash, Sen. Dick Durbin has been critical of the FMCSA’s oversight of DND and supported the agency’s decision to take the carrier off the highways. In a statement Wednesday night, a spokesman for the Illinois Democrat said the judge’s ruling “seems to put profits over the safety of motorists.”

The FMCSA order, signed by Midwest Field Administrator Darin Jones, said that the agency’s investigation had uncovered “an unmistakable, dangerous pattern of serious falsification” of duty logbooks, which are intended to ensure drivers don’t spend too long on the road without rest.

The government compared seven DND drivers’ logbooks to other records, including Tollway data, and found that all of the drivers had falsified their logs.

Goodwin determined that the investigator’s methods were insufficient to justify such a sweeping penalty, and he deemed the Tollway records of little weight. He also dismissed FMCSA’s claim that DND had refused to use Tollway data as a way of monitoring its drivers’ compliance with the rules.

Goodwin said that Jones, who spent about a day on the witness stand, contradicted the allegations contained in the FMCSA order. When questioned, Jones was at times “evasive” and also gave “lengthy rambling” responses, the judge wrote. Goodwin said he gave the field administrator’s testimony “limited weight” as a result.

DND drivers’ falsification of paper logs was presented by the government as a widespread problem within the company.

But between the time that the FMCSA closed its investigation, in late March, and when it ordered the company off the road, in early April, DND had taken steps to switch its drivers to electronic logbooks, which are considered more difficult to falsify and easier to monitor. The FMCSA did not take that into account before issuing the out-of-service order, Goodwin said.

LaPorte said the company has ordered 35 e-logs and installed at least seven.

Goodwin’s ruling does not affect the probationary status that was assigned to the company as a result of FMCSA’s investigation. That “conditional” rating, which does not prevent carriers from operating but subjects them to increased inspections, is scheduled to go into effect in late May.

The Illinois state trooper injured last month after a semitrailer plowed into emergency vehicles along Interstate 88, killing an Illinois Tollway worker, filed a lawsuit Monday against the truck driver and the company that employed him.

The semi driver who caused a fiery accident that killed a tollway worker and badly injured a state trooper had been working 36 hours at the time of the crash, a prosecutor said today as bail was set at $150,000.

Naperville North Principal Stephanie Posey cautioned that much of the high school building was still a work in progress Wednesday as she strolled past rows of desks and chairs stacked in the hallways and sign after sign alerting passersby of "wet paint."